Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Senior US and Russian officials will meet in Riyadh on Tuesday to discuss “restoring all bilateral relations” and setting up possible talks to end the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin has said.
Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser, will head up the delegation, Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president’s spokesperson, told reporters on Monday.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and special envoy Steve Witkoff will meet the Russian delegation, US state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said. Rubio will meet Saudi officials on Monday ahead of the Russia talks.
US and western officials have described this week’s meetings as logistical and aimed at preparing for a possible meeting between President Donald Trump and Putin with an eye towards ending the war between Russia and Ukraine.
“Hopefully, we will make some really good progress with regard to Russia-Ukraine,” Witkoff told Fox News on Sunday, in reference to the Riyadh talks.
Russia is framing the meeting as the start of its return from the cold after years of western attempts to isolate it in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
“The presidents agreed to leave behind this absolutely ridiculous period in US-Russia relations when they essentially didn’t speak except for isolated technical and humanitarian issues,” Lavrov said at a press conference on Monday. The Russian delegation will “listen” to its US counterparts and “be ready to react”, he added.
The hastily convened talks have alarmed Ukraine and its European allies. The US did not inform its allies of Trump’s call with Putin in advance and has largely left them out of the process, though it has said Ukraine may join talks at a later date.
Rubio said there was “no process” yet to bring an end to the war, and that the team was exploring ways to create one. He said he expected to eventually involve Ukraine and Europe in some way.
“If it’s real negotiations, and we’re not there yet, but if that were to happen, Ukraine will have to be involved, because they’re the ones that were invaded. And the Europeans will have to be involved because they have sanctions on Putin and Russia as well,” he said on CBS.
Russia dismissed European efforts to carve out a place at the peace talks and possibly send a peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine.
“Their desire to be part of the Ukraine negotiating process has been satisfied more than once,” Lavrov said, referring to the failed Minsk process, led by France and Germany, that brokered a fragile ceasefire following Russia’s initial invasion in 2014.
As long as European countries want to strengthen Ukraine militarily, “I don’t know if there’s anything for them to do at the negotiating table,” he added.
Peskov said it was “difficult to talk about” a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine because it would involve Nato members and “Nato troops will be deployed on Ukrainian territory”.
